


Ocean by Night

by Ytterbium



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crowley Has Mommy Issues, Crowley and Rowena talk about feelings, I just want them to get along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 22:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7011079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ytterbium/pseuds/Ytterbium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘Gavin died centuries ago’, Rowena says. ‘He has to. Or Bobby Singer will never meet him and you will never give him back his soul. He won’t be killed by a Leviathan and Sam Winchester can’t rescue him from hell. Do you know what this will change? Everything.’<br/>‘Let it’, Crowley says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ocean by Night

‘That boy shouldn’t be here’, someone says behind him and Crowley doesn’t turn around. It’s almost dark by now and a storm is coming, there are no stars in the sky and at night the sea looks different- like it’s a living breathing thing. He’s standing on the water in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, in between the spraying waves with saltwater in his hair and monstrous fish like shadows moving, moving underneath and he wonders, briefly, how long exactly Rowena’s been there.  
Because she knows why he’s here, of course she bloody knows- what he’s staring at, who’s in that ship, now only a silhouette on the horizon waiting to be swallowed by the night.  
‘He doesn’t belong. Can’t you feel it?’ Of course he can. He can feel the wrongness dripping off Gavins skin like sweat. He can hear his heart beating in the distance, carried over miles and miles of dusk and anxious waves, and there is a vibration to it that sounds like bursting glass and ill-fitting gears and it makes Crowley want to crawl out of his skin.  
Because he can remember it both ways now-  
Gavin misplaced in time and Abaddon torturing him, again and again, and Crowley- not human; but there was something human in him that day and it scratched at his rib cage from inside his chest and demanded to be let out and it never fell silent, not completely; not even when made his son get out and he walk away into a foreign world three hundred years from home but alive and more or less well.  
But he remembers also: Gavins ghost in Bobby Singers kitchen, dirty and smelling of cheap whisky and sadness and apricot cake, and Gavin hates you maybe even more than you hate him that led to the worst deal Crowley’s ever made - a soul for a bag of bones.  
Gavin died in the past and then he didn’t and somehow both events still hold true.  
Crowley’s seen things happen and undone countless times. Maybe the angels think they’re the only ones who can visit the past and change whatever the hell they like but then again they’re a bag of self-righteous, arrogant dicks. He’s done things they can’t even think of. He killed Caesar. He went back to Mesopotamia where he met the most endearing and ruthless angel he’s ever known (Naomi - what has happened to her?). He rescued Apollo 13 twice. But all these things, he changed them and then they were changed - Gavin is different. He’s not right. Gavin’s both dead and alive to him now and that just can’t be except it is, and someone should probably take care of this before reality catches up and the world disintegrates around this one boy who shouldn’t be, but God’s gone and the Winchesters don’t care and Crowley can’t do it and also he’s the fucking king of hell.  
He hasn’t talked to his son in two years (Gavin wouldn’t want to and Crowley wouldn’t know what to say) but he didn’t abandon him, not completely. He’s been lurking in the shadows of dusty taverns desolate with age where Gavin used to wipe the counters, he watched him work for an unsuccessful newspaper agency for some time and now Gavin’s sailing back to Scotland despite the age of airplanes because he’s homesick and lost and also, some people never learn.  
He can’t help feeling – not love, maybe fondness - for this boy he’s never really known because he was always too drunk and fucked up to care.  
He remembers Gavin so clearly it hurts. He remembers the day he was born to a mother who was the cheapest whore in the brothel and Crowley - except he hadn’t been Crowley back then, he was Fergus McLeod, a short, red-haired boy of barely nineteen who owned two pairs of pants and a bottle of scotch. He remembers holding Gavin, covered in slime and blood, and how he thought: I can make this work- I won’t treat him like she treated me and he’ll grow up and things will be okay. But, well.  
He turned out to be a violent drunk and he’d always enjoyed beating up the girls at the whorehouse a little too much. And then there was no one else around to hate so he ended up hating him.  
Rowena’s shifting behind him, he can hear her breathing and finds himself asking if she could drown. He won’t turn to look at her- he won’t.  
Mother, he wants to say, and an insult or something witty, but it’s the first time they’re alone together since he had to watch Lucifer kill her and he doesn’t feel like pretending for once.  
‘How long have you known?’, he asks her instead, because, really, how long has she known? ‘That you have a son? Long before you sold your soul and declared yourself king of hell.’ ‘What?’ Now he’s turning around all the same. He eyes at her, suspicious. ‘What?’, he demands again and wishes he didn’t sound like a fretful five year old without any teeth.  
‘What did you expect?’, Rowena says. She’s wearing high heels and a red dress and she’s standing on the water like a goddess or a queen and Crowley thinks chances are she’ll outlive them all- even the angel and him, king of the damned. ‘I kept tabs on you when I left.’ ‘You - Why?’ ‘What do you mean, why? You are my son. I was curious. I wanted to know if you would make it. If there was enough of me in you to help you survive.’ ‘So - you know?’, he asks slowly, trying to sound casual and not desperate or broken at all. ‘About all of it?’ ‘Oh, I know of your suffering. I’ve heard you cry at night when the rats came gnawing off your bones. I’ve seen you fight and pray and die - I’ve seen that woman trying to drown you after you stole her food. I’ve seen you sink to your knees and how you bled all over your thighs and your stomach and the floor. I know the truth about why you sold your soul. I’ve listened to your screams when you were on the rack, and my dreams filled with your visions, with redness and pain and my name on your lips. Mother, you would say. Mother, where are you?’  
Rowena sounds like she’s enjoying herself. She could have saved him, he’s pretty sure she could, she could have come down into hell and got him off that rack and put and end to it all - but she didn’t. He doesn’t know what to make of that. Because don’t listen to the demons who try and tell you otherwise, no one enjoys being strung to a rack and tortured for years and years. But then again if that doesn’t happen you’ll never be one of them.  
‘You know he hates me’, Crowley says, turning around to stare at the ship once again. ‘And you think it’s my fault that he does?’ ‘Isn’t it?’ ‘He hates you because you used to beat him until he was covered in his blood. He hates you because you’ve been nothing but cruel to him. He hates you because you’re a monster that can’t be loved, not even by his son.’ ‘And where do you think I learned all this?’ Rowena doesn’t answer. ‘I was many things’, she says at last. ‘But I was never cruel. That you haven’t got from me, Fergus.’ Crowley hears what she’s not saying, ‘Who was he?’, he asks. He’s been asking her this question since he could talk and she never told him but he won’t be lied to, not again. ‘Someone you will never know. He’s been dead for centuries.’ ‘So am I.’ ‘You two will never meet. You will never know his name.’ Rowenas fury is a liquid, spilling out of her eyes and her mouth and Crowley backs off. ‘What did he do to you?’, he asks, ‘exactly.’ ‘Does it matter?’ He considers this for a long time - because of course it fucking matters – and then he says, ‘I guess not. Still. I blame you for everything, mother.’  
He doesn’t say: haven’t I suffered enough? Let my son live - just for another day.  
‘Gavin died centuries ago’, Rowena says. ‘He has to. Or Bobby Singer will never meet him and you will never give him back his soul. He won’t be killed by a Leviathan and Sam Winchester can’t rescue him from hell. Do you know what this will change? Everything.’  
‘Let it’, Crowley says but there’s no rage in it.  
‘I will send him back. Tonight. You have waited far too long, Fergus.’  
He knows it must be done. They’re still enemies and they still want to rip out each others throat but he also understands that she’s doing this for him- she’s doing it so he doesn’t have to.  
The wind sprays salt water on his face, he licks it off when it trickles down and it tastes like someone elses tears.  
‘Do you want to say goodbye?’ Rowena asks him and Crowley traitorously finds himself wishing that with her it won’t have to end in blood – that maybe it’s not too late to make things right between them after all.  
‘No’, Crowley says and when he turns around she’s gone. And he’s alone again with the darkness and the storm, standing in the same ocean Gavin died – now such a long time ago.


End file.
